Respect The Readers And The Search Engine
written by Marsha Maung
It’s lucky for some of us who started out with the whole web content writing thing when it was still raw out of the fridge.We’re lucky because we see how NOT to do things now.
Back in those days, web content writers were rare and we didn’t really know how to capture the audience we wanted, so we wrote rubbish and planted them everywhere. Then we frantically plugged words together and combine them in random order with keywords we wanted to rank highly with. We sent them out and the spider-bots picked them up and thought dumbly, ‘Wow, lookie here….this page here, lots of ‘making money online’ keyword. Must be really important. Let’s rank it on first page.’
As if it’s of any surprise at all, people found out how dumb we were trying to do things and caught on. It’s easy to do, so, this is no-brainer stuff.
Soon, everyone was doing it and the search engines were buggered up.
It’s amazing because the search engines have gotten smarter – the sad part is, some folks have not. They’re still adopting the old-school SEO techniques and they’ve got to realize that the web content writing style is not only out-of-date, it’s disrespectful of the readers and the audience.
The audience have grown smarter now that even dogs have blogs. If they could bark their way to promote their blogs, they would. So, we need to evolve with that. The moment readers find out how you’re making use of them to get traffic from them, they’re never coming back. Once they realize you’re committed to publishing utter rubbish, they’ll keep their wallets as far away from you as possible.
Is THAT what you want?
If you want success in your business and you want to provide good web content for your readers so that they learn how to respect you, you need to add true value to the stuff that you publish for them. Otherwise, it’s simply adieus and they’re never coming back.
Whenever I fall for fake links and pages, bear in mind that I take a good, long look at the web URL. I try my best to remember the name (there are too many, however) so that I know where NOT to click the next time the link comes up. Feed the readers and fool the search engines with links that are merely filled with ads, publish rubbish reviews and something will happen….it’s only a matter of time.
In conclusion, I honestly wish that more people realize that the readers are getting far too smart for us to fool the way we used to fool them now.
But that’s just me.
Note: Photo credit
July 27th, 2009 at 3:29 am
Hear hear! Readers are indeed wising up. But some web content writers still cling onto their ‘traditional’ ways, hoping to snag unsuspecting readers. Hopefully, good content writers out there would quash this situation.
August 5th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Hi Marsha - You are right but do you know even some so-called reputable companies are using black hat techniques and stuffing keywords into content just because they can and they think this is THE way to get high rankings? I remember many years ago, whenever we talk about SEO, most clients give us blank looks. Now of course clients know a little bit about SEO but sadly their knowledge is more misinformation than real usable knowledge! Unscrupulous “internet marketers” (oooh how I hate that word) sell them the wrong idea. If all it takes is just putting all the keywords into a website, where would Google’s ranking algorithm go? Putting them on the 1st page of Google is easy - but if there’s no content on the website, most will click in, get pissed and click away forever.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:24 am
Philip, yeah and some poor companies are STILL being duped with the old SEO tactics. I know some of them and I scold them for not asking me first. They got banned actually.
Krista, the thing is some of them actually try to do it themselves or hire some obscure company from some part of the world who just FOUND OUT how to put keywords into content and plonk them there. They don’t get results and then think SEO is stupid. These people give people like us a reallly bad name!